Towards a Better World 

Finnish Utopian Communities since 18th Century

Teuvo Peltoniemi 10.9.2024

Finnish utopian communities on Google Maps.

Teuvo Peltoniemi 10.9.2024

TOWARDS A BETTER WORLD 
-Short history of Finnish Utopian Communities since 18th Century

Finnish Utopian communities - Diversity of Utopian goals - The teachings of Finnish Utopian communities

Aleksis Kivi’s “The Seven Brothers" (1870), one of the classics of Finnish literature, is an excellent example of a Utopia. Dissatisfied with their conditions and form of society, the brothers wanted to establish their own mini-society far into the deep Finnish forest. Like the seven brothers, many Finns have fled to the backwoods of exotic countries to start new life, learned a new language, quarreled with each other, and tried to get along without the surrounding society.

The roots of Utopian communities can be found in the thinking of ancient democracy as well as in the views of early Christianity. Plato’s Order Utopia has later served as a model for many authoritarian Utopian states. Thomas More's book Utopia (1516) shows the influence of the New Testament in addition to Plato. More's Utopia is an island. There is no private property and no money. Everyone should work. In the Soviet Union, More was seen as outlining the basic features of communist society. The Catholic Church regarded it as a monk’s ideal and proclaimed More a Saint in 1935. These confessions also demonstrate the universality of Utopian ideas themselves. From a good Utopia, everyone will find their own!

The solution of the Utopian Socialists to the problems of the Industrial Revolution was harmonious socialism based on human cooperation and class agreement. They believed in the goodness of man and the "new man" who could be brought up. The developers of Utopian socialism were e.g. the French de Saint-Simon and Fourier and the Father of the Co-operatives, Englishman Robert Owen. This line of thought was also represented by the Finnish utopist, journalist Matti Kurikka.

The religious undertone of Utopian thinking is reflected in the abundance of Utopian religious communities. The most wonderful Utopian communities are described in hymns that offer a double Utopia, after the worldly eternal, the Heaven. Secular and religious Utopian communities have an important fundamental difference. Secular Utopias strive to change the human environment, religious Utopias people themselves. For Matti Kurikka, Utopian socialism was also combined with Theosophy and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Concrete Utopian communities were established especially in North America, with emigrants mainly from Europe. The Golden Land of Utopias was the United States, which in many ways was an open and free society. As early as 1858, another hundred secular or religious Utopian communities with a total population of thousands were registered there. The main secular Utopian communities were Oneida, Owen’s New Harmony, and Fourier’s Phalansteries. The most well-known of the religious Utopian communities were the early Mennonites, Shakers, and Theosophical communities.

Finnish Utopian communities

Also Finnish Utopian communities are closely related in their ideas to the world history of Utopian communities, and were influenced by the same great worldwide idea flows, if often with some delay.  The Finnish communities, with the exception of Sointula, are seldom mentioned in connection with More’s Utopia, Fourier, Owen or Oneida. But Finnish communities have a glorious history dating back to the 18th century. Finns have established about twenty Utopian communities around the world. The most famous are the Canadian Sointula, the Argentine Colonia Finlandesa and the Brazilian Penedo.

The basis for Finnish Utopian migration was laid in 1734 by a mystical-separatist sect led by the priest sons Jaakko and Erik Eriksson. After a conflict with the church, the brothers were expelled from the country. With 120 members, they toured Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany for 11 years. The sect was finally allowed to settle for rest of its life time on the island of Värmdö in Sweden.

At this stage, religious conditions in Sweden and Finland had also become more tolerant and the idea of ​​enlightenment was gaining ground. That was the basis of August Nordenskiöld's and Carl Wadström’s New Jerusalem Plan for the return of black slaves to Africa. However, the Finnish-Swedish-English community failed to materialize as Nordenskiöld died soon in Sierra Leone in 1792.

The first Utopian community of Finns of the next century, founded by Captain Fridolf Höök in Helsinki in 1868 was based on Socialist and Cooperative activities. The group of 50 people sailed to Strelok where the Amurland community was established on the Russian Pacific coast. At the same time, a group of farmers arrived in the same region from Turku. After the end of the communities many Finns still remained in the area and influenced the development of Vladivostok.

The next wave includes the three communities of Utopian Socialist Matti Kurikka. The short-lived Chillagoa railway tent camp was in Queensland, Australia in 1900. The most significant Finnish Utopian community, the Kaleva People's Sointula (The Harmony), was founded on Malcolm Island in British Columbia, Canada in 1901. In Sointula Kurikka was joined by his colleague A.B. Mäkelä. There had been altogether about a thousand Finns in Sointula before it broke down in 1905. Sointula continued as an ordinary Finntown, whereas Kurikka founded the men-only Sammon Takojat in Websters Corner near Vancouver. After its disintegration in 1912, Kurikka tried to establish a Utopian women's community, but no longer received supporters.

Finnish nationalism and Czar-oppression were behind many Finnish Utopian socialist projects. But nationalist circles nurtured their own grandiose ideas about moving the entire Finnish people to a new place. In 1899 a group led  by  Konni Zilliacus and Axel Lille planned for a refuge ”New Finland" from Red Deer in Alberta, Canada, but without results. On a nationalistic basis, a Finnish community Itabo was established in Cuba in 1904. The initiators were Eero Erkko and A.A. Karr, but Itabo was built mainly by members of the American-Finnish labor movement. Another Cuban community, Ponnistus Cooperative, which began in 1906 in Omaja, Cuba, was an even more distinctive socialist project. The accomplices were Oscar Norring and William Keskinen. Both communities lasted only a short time.

Colonia Finlandesa was born in the valley of Misiones in Argentina in 1906, on the Finnish nationalism basis. It was founded by the well-known cultural personality Arthur Thesleff. At best, there were about five hundred members.

Three Cooperative farms were established in the United States mainly through the activities of the labor movement. The first, established 1905 by Maggie Walz was a Christian-capitalist cooperative farm on the island of Drummond in Michigan. Later the community was taken over by the Socialists. Alex Kauhanen was the mean leader at the Finnish California Cooperative Farm which was established in Redwood Valley in 1912.  Arvo Vitali was founder of Finnish Georgia Cooperative Farm in Jesup, Georgia in 1921.

During the "Karelian Fever", the American and Canadian Finns established communes in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. The commune Kylväjä (Sower) was founded in 1922 near Rostov in Southern Russia. The collective farm Säde in Aunus, Hiilisuo near Petrozavodsk and Vonganperä in Uhtua were located in Soviet Karelia. The only in one way successful Finnish community was Sower, which still operates as a large private farm. After the internationalization of the commune, most of the Finns, however, left, some to their homelands, but a large number to Petrozavodsk, where they became victims of Stalin's terror.

Finland's "tropical fever" of the 1920s gave birth to four migration plans. Vegetarianism and Pacifism were supported in these circles. The Paradiso plan for Riviera, France in 1925 remained a mere dream. The main leader of this movement, Toivo Uuskallio founded in 1929, in Brazil the Penedo community, which after the Utopian period became known as the tourist village “Little Finland”. There were about 150 members. A year later, Viljavakka was founded in the Dominican Republic under the leadership of Oskari Jalkio. The ideology also included opposing forced vaccinations. In the 1920s, individual vegetarian families moved to Colonia Villa Alborada in Paraguay. The power figures were Armas Nikkanen and Eero Laulaja.

Latest Finnish Utopian community was born in 1971 in Israel by Seppo Raulo.  Finnish kibbutz Jad Hashmona was founded by Christian Finns to help building Israel in memory of the eight Jews handed over from Finland to the Nazis. Kibbutz became Israel dominated over the years, and only a few Finns remain now.

Diversity of Utopian goals

According to estimates, there have been only about ten thousand persons connected to the Finnish Utopian communities. The majority belong to the migration wave of Karelian Fever. The two largest, Sointula and Colonia Finlandesa had a total of about 1,500 people, but not at the same time, as members came and went. Compared to the total number of expatriate Finns of about two million at all times, the Utopian migration was a rather small creek.

Utopian settlements also included members who sought only the fulfillment of their own happiness, richness, and a more comfortable life for themselves and their families. However, the great majority of those who left for the Finnish Utopian communities were inspired by the more idealistic goals.

Finnish Utopian communities can generally be divided into four groups by main ideology: 1) Socialism and cooperative, 2) Religions and Theosophy, 3) Finnish Nationalism, and 4) Nature and Vegetarianism.

Usually the background was a diverse combination of several ideas. When combinations are taken into account, there were socialist views in 11 colonies, and religious in 10. The sobriety idea was strong in almost all settlements. Cooperatives were an organizational form in 13 Utopian settlements. There were also changes in ideology in the communities. Some communities starting as Nationalistic or Religious changed to Socialism. Over the time, most settlements moved to family units and private property.

In classical Utopian communities, there were typically common shared decision-making, work, policing, housing, and dining. Many attempted to reform religion, political thinking, family, and education.

The most perfect Finnish Utopian communities were Sointula and Penedo. They tried to build a whole new world. Most of the others tried only some of the possibilities of Utopian communities. The most common Utopian features of the Finnish communities were shared accommodation, shared dining and equal pay. In some communities, the salary was replaced by future receivables.

Only a few Finnish Utopian communities addressed sexual moral or parenting. The most prominent exceptions were Sointula and Penedo. Sointula founded a kindergarten and in Penedo it was initially planned to get by at home education.

The Finns had left behind bureaucratic Finnish state and narrow-minded church and strict internal control. But the Finnish language was important and Finnishness was cherished. Learning the language of the environment was slow. Often the teacher was the only foreign language member of the community. Contacts with Finland were lively at first. The migrants received letters and magazines. But over the years, connections diminished, and settlements e.g. in South America could be ‘rediscovered’ among the Finnish public.

The teachings of Finnish Utopian communities

There were disputes and disagreements in almost all communities. They were mostly related to financial difficulties like in Penedo, which was wrestling with large loans. Controversies were also held about goals, like in Sointula. Due to conflicts, Utopian communities often divided into two and eventually disintegrated completely. Yet not all members lost their faith in finding again of a real Utopian community. Therefore, to some extent members also moved from one settlement to another, especially from the American cooperative farms to the Soviet Karelian communities.

The Utopian character usually diluted in a couple of years. After that, those who remained in the locality began their independent lives as ordinary immigrants. For the longest time, U.S. cooperative farms remained afloat, end coming mostly with times of general economic depression. A relatively short life cycle is characteristic of all Utopian communities, small or big, so that even the “Great Utopia,” or the Communist Soviet Union, collapsed with the roar of 1991. The only truly long-lived Utopian communities so far seem to be religious, like the Mennonites and Amish.

The Utopian communities of Finns have mostly proved to have been failures.  But still they participated in the ultimate role of Utopian communities: helping to see what is at stake, what needs to be changed, and how it can be pursued. Perhaps the importance of Utopian communities is measured elsewhere than by their external destiny. And Utopian communities are not dead. The eco-communities of the environmental movement are ideologically a continuation of Utopian attempts, even if they prefer to be called Intentional Communities. Virtual communities can be considered as the newest entrants to Utopia communities. The search for a Better World and lifestyle is always going on!

Sources: This article is based on the book:

Teuvo Peltoniemi: “PARATIISEJA RAKENTAMASSA - Suomalaisten utopiayhteisöjen historiaa”, SKS 2024.  and websites: www.Finnutopias.fi and www.facebook.com/groups/finnUtopias

Article updated Sept 10, 2024